This invention relates to a labeler for adhering a heat-sensitive label to a label adhered body.
A conventional labeler for adhering a heat-sensitive label or label piece to a container or the like was designed to hold the label by sucking an adhesive surface of the label with a suction hole formed onto a suction drum after the label was cut into a specified size, and to have a necessary item printed on its outside surface opposite to the adhesive surface. Then the print was checked and, after a label piece with printing failure was removed, the printed surface of the label was sucked by a suction hole of an adhering drum, reversing the label and holding the printing surface, instead of the adhesive surface. The outside adhesive surface of the label was then activated, and the label was adhered onto a container or the like.
In other words, the adhering drum needed to suck and hold the label having its adhesive side face outside to activate the adhesive surface.
Therefore, since printing process could not be carried out on the adhering drum, two drums, namely, the sucking drum was used for sucking and holding the adhesive surface of the label, and then to print something on the printing surface of the label, and the adhering drum was used for adhering the label onto a container or the like after printing.
In addition, labels in various sizes are available, which are used according to purposes of use. Suction holes of an adhering drum must be covered with a label when the label is sucked by the adhering drum of the labeler. The suction holes are composed of a group of holes disposed on the drum. However, since pressure is not reduced if there is any suction hole not covered with the label, the label cannot be sucked.
Thus, at present, a plurality of adhering drums having suction hole groups matching a label size are prepared, and a adhering drum of the labeler is changed to another when a label size is changed.
In addition, for continuous adhering of labels, adhesive of the labels needed to be activated immediately before press-adhering labels. Thus, an activation device was necessary to be installed in the vicinity of a press-adhering device. The drum is enlarged because the label is fed to the suction hole in the vicinity of the activation device, the label is not sucked in the suction hole between a label adhering portion and a label-feeding portion, becoming a useless part in the process. Such is a drawback of the prior art.
The inventors conducted studies in order to reduce the number of drums to one, and presented a single drum type heat-sensitive adhesive activating labeler in Japanese Patent Application No. 11-43612. This invention is extremely advantageous, but the activation device installed in the peripheral surface of a drum was not disposed on the full peripheral surface.
In order to solve the problem in the earlier technology, the present invention provides a single drum labeler constructed in such a manner that the number of drums is set to be one, without using a suction drum. Label adhering speed is increased by providing an activation device on a full periphery excluding the label feeding portion and the label press-adhering portion of a adhering drum to make an activation region long, and label pieces of different sizes can be processed with one drum by reducing the diameter of the adhering drum, and closing a suction hole according to a label size to adjust an sucking surface. A label adhering method using the labeler is also provided to solve the problem.
This invention relates to a single drum type heat-sensitive adhesive activating labeler. The labeler comprises a label sheet; a printer for printing a necessary item on a surface opposite to an adhesive surface of the label sheet; a feed roll for feeding a label piece to a suction hole of every other position of label suction holes of a adhering drum provided before the printer; and a label sheet cutter disposed at a position where at least a tip of a cut label piece provided before the roll is brought into contact with the suction hole of the adhering drum. Next to the cutter, a label adhering drum is provided. The label adhering drum comprises a drum having label suction holes disposed at equal intervals in an odd number of places of a peripheral surface of the drum and having a ventilation hole, one end of which is opened to a top surface and the other end connected to a pressure reducing device, the communication hole and the label suction holes being communicated with each other. The label adhering drum further comprises a closing rod freely detachably inserted into an open hole bored in the top surface of the label adhering drum to close an unnecessary label suction hole. The labeler of this invention further comprises a feeder that feeds an article, to which a label is adhered, in synchronization with a label sucked to a label suction hole of every other position; a pressing device, provided in a position opposite to a drum disposed before the cutter, to press the fed-in article to the adhering drum and adhere a label by rotation of the drum; and a heat-sensitive adhesive activation device disposed along periphery of the drum except for the positions where the drum sucks the label oppositely to the drum surface along a peripheral edge of the label adhering drum and where the article is pressed to the adhering drum and the label is adhered thereto.
A single drum type heat-sensitive adhesive activating labeler of this invention may comprise the label suction hole disposed on the drum that is a suction hole formed with a group of suction holes. Further, the label sheet cutter above may include a latch and a cutting blade disposed in the vicinity of a suction hole at a rear part of the suction hole group of the adhering drum when viewed from a rolling direction of the drum. Furthermore, the label sheet cutter may include a rotary blade and a rotary roller provided proximity to the adhering drum and being opposite to each other sandwiching a label sheet.
The label suction holes of the labeler of the invention disposed in the odd number of places on the peripheral surface of the drum may include wide suction part for sucking large labels.
The closing rod freely of the labeler of this invention, detachably inserted into the open hole bored in the top surface of the adhering drum to close the unnecessary label suction hole may have a length reaching a suction hole of a lowermost layer from the open hole bored in the top surface. Particularly, the closing rod may have a head large enough not to be inserted into the open hole bored in the top surface. The closing rod may further include an adjusting portion for adjusting length of insertion from the open hole bored in the top surface. The closing rod may be a hollow one, and may include a through-hole formed in the closing rod wall at a place where the through-hole meets with a suction hole, and an end opening of the hollow part of the closing rod is communicated with a ventilation path.
The closing rod may include a plurality of through-holes at the locations that meets with suction holes having a size suited to a label size in another surface of the rod wall.
A decompressing device connected to label suction holes of the drum may stop suction operation at a stage when the label is adhered onto the fed-in article pressed to the adhering drum by means of rotation of the drum.
The heat-sensitive adhesive activation device may be a far-infrared ray heater adapted to activate heat-sensitive adhesive of the label by means of radiant heat of far-infrared rays without contact.
The pressing device may include an arc-shaped pressing member provided along a drum peripheral surface to guide the fed-in article to the adhering drum and press the article by rotation of the drum. Further, the labeler may include a printing failed label adhered article detecting and discharging device in a position of an advancing direction from the pressing device.
In addition, this invention relates to a continuous label adhering method by a single drum type heat-sensitive adhesive activating labeler. The method includes steps of: sucking a label at a label suction hole of a single drum type heat-sensitive adhesive activating labeler; activating adhesive by a heat-sensitive adhesive activation device; adhering the label onto an article fed in by a pressing device; rotating the label suction hole once or one turn without sucking a label piece; returning the label suction hole to a label sucking position to suck another label; activating adhesive by the heat-sensitive adhesive activation device again; pasting the label onto another article fed in by the pressing device; and repeating the steps.